EKART/BAAL

BAAL 
(looking around) Good.  Here in the hot primeval mud our white bodies can squirm 
and multiply like maggots. 

EKART 
Fuck your images.  Go get some food.  We need meat. 

BAAL 
Fuck my images?  Fuck your music! 

EKART 
Yes, fuck my music!  Exactly!  Forget it!  ...What about your woman, where did you ditch her this time? 

BAAL 
Ah, to hell with her.  She keeps running around after me, whimpering and screwing up my life.  What am I supposed to do? 

EKART 
You're sinking deeper into the mud. 

BAAL 
I know.  I'm too heavy to get out. 

EKART 
Why don't you just die? 

BAAL 
No!  I'm going to fight it.  I've been fighting it.  That's all I've ever done!  They can cut off my skin and I'll live. They can cut out my eyes, I'll retreat into my stomach. They can cut out my guts, I'll ooze out into the black earth and start all over again. 

EKART 
Just since we've been here you've gotten fatter. 

BAAL 
Yes, but my skin is getting looser.  The more I swell, the more room I have to fill up.  There is room for someone else in me now.  As long as it's someone thin, and wasted.  Like you. You don't have room in your body even for yourself.

EKART 
I've retreated into my skull.  I have all the heavens and hells in there with me, all the universe, and I drift around in it, wherever the wind blows me. 

BAAL 
(shakes his head) Man, you're fucked up.  You've been drinking too much. 

EKART 
I drink too much?!  I'm drunk on things you'll never know! Can't you see it in my eyes? 

BAAL 
I see the wind in your eyes.  It's blowing the flesh of your face away.  You're disappearing.  It's terrifying. 

EKART 
I'm approaching absolute purity. 

BAAL 
Where do you come from?  Nobody knows anything about you. What's your story? 

EKART 
I don't have a story.  I just am. (listens) What's that?  A rat? 

BAAL 
Ah.  You've got ears, and they hear rats in the night. You're still here, you're not all burned up in a blue flame, don't give me that.  You crawl around in the mud just like me. 
You just don't see it.  One day you'll see those rats. Then you'll be all right again.